Lawmakers consider changes to Secret Service

Published 3:29 pm, Thursday, October 9, 2014

WASHINGTON — Key members of Congress are weighing dramatic changes to the embattled Secret Service, including moving it out of the Homeland Security Department and breaking up its mission.

The proposals come as lawmakers assess how to improve the agency after a series of scandals, including a White House break-in by a man with a knife last month. The agency’s director, Julia Pierson, resigned amid the controversy, but lawmakers are promising they’ll continue their focus once Congress reconvenes after the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

In the latest development, the Washington Post reported Thursday on evidence implicating a White House advance team member in a prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents in Colombia in 2012. White House officials have denied involvement by anyone on their team, but the Post story said White House officials were informed at the time.

One suggestion for improving operations at the Secret Service involves moving it back into the Treasury Department, where it resided for decades until the creation of the Homeland Security Department after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Elementary school in Oakland opens time capsule from 1927San Francisco Chronicle

Brides of March walk through San FranciscoSan Francisco Chronicle

WildCare rescues Western scrub jay from rodent glue trapWildCare

The Regulars: The CarpenterJessica Christian

Massive fire in San Francisco's North BeachDavid Essling

But some current and former Secret Service agents trace the decline of morale and performance at the agency to its move into DHS, which they say shoehorned the trim and well-functioning Secret Service into a snarled bureaucracy where it became management-heavy and had to compete for its budget with other law enforcement entities.

“The Secret Service was essentially allowed to run its business unencumbered, with lack of interference,” said Dan Emmett, a former agent at the Secret Service and author of a new book on the subject. “Then this monstrosity of a department called DHS was created, and the Secret Service was unceremoniously ripped from Treasury, where it had operated so efficiently.”

Some lawmakers also question the dual mission of the Secret Service, which was created in 1865 to investigate counterfeit currency, and expanded to a presidential protection mission after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The agency, with a staff of about 6,500 and an annual budget hovering around $1.5 billion — making it a fraction of the size of some other Homeland Security entities — now also investigates credit card fraud and certain other financial crimes.

“It’s a small agency, and to have two broad missions poses a challenge, so that has to be reviewed,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said.